Business Problem

When DC Health Link fell behind schedule and was at risk of losing its federal charter, DCHBX engaged the team at Courage LLC to oversee IT project management, IT architecture and IT operations for the District’s Health Benefit Exchange and eligibility system. The goal was to: 1.) get the project back on track for the federal deadline; 2.) roadmap a future state architecture that better served the goals of DCHBX; and 3.) upgrade to a smoothly functioning IT operation to provide 24/7 uptime and support to end users and District stakeholders.

Approach Taken

The Courage team recovered the schedule by transitioning the DC Health Link project into an agile delivery model: leading daily standups; establishing an agile “backlog”; and empowering prioritization of defects and features by business stakeholders using agile tools. The future state architecture was created by developing a REST API service orientation layer to allow an otherwise closed system to be expanded and improved upon. IT operations were refactored to meet industry best practices. Toolkits supporting IT helpdesk operations were simplified to exclusively use cloud CRM services (Salesforce) in order to create an end-to-end view of customer problems.

Results Delivered

The project went live on-time for ACA deadlines. We were one of only four states that successfully launched on time and stayed up for Open Enrollment. The future state architecture has been implemented for early adopters and will be completely rolled out in time for Open Enrollment 2016. Finally, DC Health Link IT Operations are successfully servicing customers 24/7 despite serious challenges with the software purchased by the project.